There are more things in heaven and earth

May 23, 2007

Today Anya and I planted 2 dwarf cherry trees (1 sweet, 1 sour), 6 blueberry bushes, 6 raspberry plants, and 2 cranberry bushes. (Yesterday we planted 2 almond trees.) It was 80 in the shade and humid. I'm pretty grouchy right now, although very glad to have these plants in the ground.

I HATE grass. Oh sure, I understand why we've chosen it as our standard, "biological pavement" ground cover. It has to be the most invasive, persistent, nasty little plant in the Midwest. It makes oxygen, and that's the best you can say for it. I had to dig 10 holes in the lawn, in what is now becoming our orchard (we already had 1 apple and 1 pear tree). So, I got out the pointy-ended shovel, aimed it into the grass, pushed-- and then stood on the shovel-- to no avail. The shovel didn't sink one iota. Due to avid pogo-sticking in my youth, I was able to actually stand on the shovel and bounce. I am here to report that 130 pounds slamming onto a pointy-ended shovel is of no concern whatsoever to your typical suburban grass thatch. It just sits there smug as a rock.

Eventually I realized I could attack at an angle, until I got the teensiest foothold beneath the grass roots, and then I could crowbar my way under a divet of grass at a time. Once the grass was cleared off, it wasn't so tough to dig the holes. After that, I'd hold the plant upright while Anya put in soil, then peat moss, then soil, etc. until the plant was stable. I'd move on to my next grass battle, and Anya would continue tamping down and adding soil and moss, up to the proper level. She was also careful with the hose, drenching the plant without disturbing too much of that last top layer of peat moss. I don't know where she gets her green thumb, but it's not from me. I never insisted on her help or even cajoled her into helping me; she simply volunteered, and moreover, was wired up with excitement for a long time after the last plant had gone into the ground. Kids do like to do real (as in meaningful) work.

A few weeks ago I explained to her how, in the future, the grocery store might not always have grapes or oranges or other foods, and how food was going to get more expensive. Therefore, I went on, we should grow some of our food. In other words, it was peak oil for almost-7-year-olds. Today she asked me: "So will we have blueberries before the gas runs out?"

Speaking of gasoline, I understand we are at 30-year lows in our gas reserves, going by the number of days of supply. Gas prices went up close to 4% just last week, and around 11% in the past month. There is no geopolitical crisis to explain this, nor any hurricane. But I do know that Saudi Arabia's oil production is falling yearly, Mexican production is falling precipitously, and Hugo Chavez is looking to sell his oil elsewhere (these are our #2, #3, and #4 sources of crude oil).

This gas price, or even twice this price, is simply how it's going to be. And if there's a major hurricane we could have shortages, empty grocery stores, and/or gas rationing. See how many presidential candidates mention that.

May 11, 2007

Dandelions aren't hard to get out, nor thistle (at least the kind we have), but grass is a nightmare. I don't know if all grass is like this, but this stuff sends out underground runners. If you pull up one grass plant by the roots, you can unearth a subterranean cable over to another grass plant, which could be several feet away.

Anya, it turns out, is capable of planting and transplanting with little or no supervision. She even got the garlic chives planted (3 plants), though they were very small and fragile. (The regular chives we got from my parents, who have a... well, basically a hedge of chives. Apparently these do very well in Michigan.)

Both kids love to water, to the point where we're liable to get root rot or something. And they've both claimed ownership of certain plants. Tristan owns (and exclusively waters) two patches of forget-me-nots. Anya owns all phlox, one lupine, and a crimson dianthus that hasn't bloomed yet.

So far we've made this progress:

(That glimpse of blue tarp is the area where I'm attempting to kill everything through denial of sunlight. I peeked underneath today and everything is wilted and yellowing, so that's a good sign. I am not sure how long to wait before I go at it with a garden rake.)

The photos don't look like much, but we now have:

thyme

rosemary

curly parlsey

flat-leaf parsley

dill

lovage

tarragon

basil (5 plants... it's my favorite)

lemon balm

spearmint

peppermint

oregano

garlic chives

regular chives

Also, as fillers:

vinca (myrtle)

dianthus

forget-me-nots

phlox

lupine

yarrow

grape hyacinth

Lastly, I had to mail-order the medicinal herbs as seeds. Eventually I will be putting in:

arnica

calendula

valerian

feverfew

comfrey

hyssop

echinacea

heartsease

(I have yet to locate St. John's Wort)

Anya now knows as much about plants as I did three or four years ago, not to mention she has hands-on experience. I am going through another round of What I Never Learned In School, marveling that I took Life Sciences and Biology without ever tending plants or taking care of animals. If I were designing a Life Sciences curriculum, I'd include: common pets & how to care for them; bacteria & fermentation; bacteria & cheese-making; yeast & bread; yeast in beer and wine-making; acetobacter and vinegar; common herbs, vegetables, and fruits & how to grow them; bees & pollination; Mendel, basic genetics, and hybridization; the human body & nutrition.

But back to gardening-- As recently as last summer I absolutely hated all yard work. And then a couple of months ago I figured out that a big part of my gardening aversion was that I hadn't been growing anything I really wanted to grow. Personally I think it's ridiculous to go to a nursery every spring, plunk down good money for annual flowers in bizarre color combinations, and then watch them die in winter. Blueberries, though... that I can get behind. (There are 6 blueberry bushes en route to me in the mail, as I write this. I had better get my behind to someplace that sells acidic peat moss, and speedily.) I find perennial flowers more attractive anyway, and as for scent, well... basil, lemon balm, and rosemary all have smells which are far more appealing to me than flowers. In fact, I prefer the smell of freshly minced garlic to the smell of roses. Possibly I have farming in my genes, but I just don't get the obsession with flowers, and yet the aversion to growing food.

May 02, 2007

Today for the first time in my life I went outside and did yardwork and actually enjoyed myself.

Previously, I only did yardwork because I felt pressured to do so by neighbors, or by what I imagined the neighbors were thinking. But now, this is a matter of my family having better tasting food, healthier food, and copious amounts of herbs and berries and other expensive culinary items. And I'm also protecting our quality of life during whatever peak oil might throw at us.

I weeded a good section of what will be the herb garden. There were so many dandelions, thistles, grasses and so on that by using my weeding tool to pry them out, I was essentially cultivating the soil (nothing like rototilling by hand, eh?). One area of this raised bed has reverted totally to grass, so I covered it with 4 layers of tarp and weighted down the corners with bricks, as instructed in a peak oil video (under the section KILL YOUR LAWN). We will see how it works.

A couple of years ago I planted redtwig dogwoods in the future herb garden, and although they're very pretty in winter, they are going to get transplanted, because they are blocking valuable sunlight. Suddenly I am obsessed with sunlight and find myself resenting huge trees that do not produce food and eliminate gardening space.

I also started the composter today, using leaves, dirt, wood ashes, a few veggie scraps, and "compost starter" bacterial mix. I mail-ordered one of those over-priced composters, figuring I would not, in reality, ever build an inexpensive composting bin out of wood planks and wire. After all, I have been planning to build a bat house for 5 years and still haven't done that, so the odds for the compost bin were looking pretty slim.

This composting barrel sits upright, with a metal shaft through the center, so that it hangs from a metal stand. There are removeable caps on either end for adding kitchen scraps or what have you, and the idea is that you tumble the barrel a few times after adding stuff, to mix it in and aerate everything. Well... I really hope that no neighbors were watching the first time I tried to get the barrel to turn over. I couldn't get it to go over at first, and actually knocked myself down in the process. I can just imagine the commentary: "Honey, come see what the Dandelion Lady is doing! She's wrestling this enormous green plastic thing.... Hey! She just knocked herself on her ass!" Oy vey.

Tomorrow Anya and I are going to go look at fruit trees at a nearby nursery, as well as trellis materials. This will also be the Year of the Ground Cover, I think, as I attempt to reduce the lawn. I've seen lawns referred to as "biological pavement," which is an excellent term. Who wants flowers, or scent, or tea, or herbs, or variation, when instead you can have work, chemicals, gas-hogging machines, noise all day on Saturday, and a living imitation of astroturf?